The second goal for any email marketer should be to get to know their subscribers. It’s important to know, so you can ensure you’re delivering relevant content of value to those subscribers.

00:22 Andy Shore: Welcome back to Clues For The Clueless email marketer everybody, we’re gonna continue on with our conversation today. We ended our section on growing your list, so now that you, hopefully, have been growing that list, it’s time to turn your attention to getting to know those new subscribers, and that’s what this whole next section of the podcast is gonna be about and what we’ll be focusing on. And what we’re gonna start with today is simply talking about why that’s even important.

00:50 Daniel Miller: Absolutely. And one of the things that has changed quite a bit in the past five years is when I would tell somebody that I am in the email marketing industry, immediately they would think “Oh, you’re a spammer.” And I think that in the past five years that’s definitely changed and people are really seeing the value that email marketing adds to it, and I think people are more open to providing their email to download a PDF, to get updates from a service or product. And I think a lot of that has to do because a lot of brands are acknowledging who their audience is and they’re adapting to that. Meaning, it’s no longer just a numbers game, it’s a quality game and that’s why it’s really, really important to know your audience, to provide quality to them.

01:28 AS: Yeah, it’s really about being relevant. No one wants to feel like they’re being marketed to, but if you’re able to connect with them and send them something that’s important to them, of interest to them and that they want to open, that’s what makes people look forward to your emails, rather than just deleting them as soon as they get them to get out of having that push notification, like I do to so many emails I receive.

01:52 DM: Exactly. If you signed up to benchmark email, you’re probably expecting tips on email marketing. If we start sending you cat videos and dog videos, we would probably go viral, but that’s not really adding value to your experience with benchmark email. And I think the more companies understand what it is that their customers or potential customers are looking for, the more engagement they’ll receive, and, of course, the more growth they’ll also see as well.

02:14 AS: Absolutely. And it’s just important to note that everybody doesn’t like the same thing. You can’t please all the people all the time. There’s varied interest within all the things you offer and that’s gonna come into play with your email marketing.

02:28 DM: Yeah. More and more, we see today… I mean go to a job fair and you’ll see that there’s a common theme of people telling you, “Hey, be as specific as you possibly can.” If you’re gonna get into, again, let’s take it to consulting now. If you’re gonna get into consulting, don’t just be a business consultant, maybe be a business consultant for the food industry or maybe even be business consultant for food industry for fast food or for healthy food or for something like that. The more specific you can be, the better it’s gonna be because when people go to search online, they do specific searches. So, again, the more relevant you are, the better that’s gonna be and that has a lot to do with your email marketing as well.

03:10 AS: Definitely. And it’s important to remember that the more subscribers you have, if you took the tips in that last section and you’re crushing it with growing your list, it makes it harder to keep that list happy. And so, that’s why taking the time to getting to know them… And we’re gonna focus with this next section on how you can do that, how you can break everyone up and what it all gets down to in terms of what’s gonna make you an effective email marketer and a less clueless one is just that ability to understand them and remembering that each email address has a person behind it.

03:46 DM: Yeah. One thing that in a way has helped us is to really outline who that person is, and if you can even imagine them, print out a picture… Wherever it is that you work, try to print out a picture of who it is that you’re talking to and let it up there. And as you’re typing out that email, look up at that picture, I’ll guarantee that email is gonna be slightly different. And what I mean by that is it’s gonna be properly written in focus for that specific person, you are writing to the person on the other side of that email address.

04:15 AS: Yeah, it’ll feel like it has a more personal touch, even though it’s a group of your entire list that you’re sending to, it’ll feel personalized for those people, and that’s really important. I will catch you next time as we continue our conversation talking about the importance of knowing your subscribers, thanks for listening.